EULER ON HOW TO RAISE WATER

EULER, [LEONHARD].

Recherche sur une nouvelle maniere d'elever de l'eau proposee par M. de Mour.

(Berlin, Haude et Spener, 1753). 4to. No wrappers as issued in "Memoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres". tome VII, pp. 305-330 + two engraved plates.

First printing of Euler's paper on how to raise water, which was a study written on the background of his - unsuccessful - garden-project in Frederick the Great's large complex of summer palaces, Sanssouci where Euler was asked to design the pumps to the many fountains.

"I wanted to make a fountain in my Garden", Frederic the Great wrote to Voltaire on 25 January 1778. But the water-art project ended in a fiasco. The fountain design was supposed to be executed according to the latest knowledge in hydraulics and should even surpass Versailles with its splendor. "Euler calculated the effort of the wheels for raising the water to a basin, from where it should fall down through canals, in order to form a fountain jet at Sans-Souci. My mill was constructed mathematically, and it could not raise one drop of water to a distance of fifty feet from the basin.
"Since then the fiasco at Sanssouci stands out as an example for the gulf between theory and practice. And Leonhard Euler, the mathematical genius from Basel, became a target of mockery and malicious joy". (Michael Eckert: Euler and the Fountains of Sanssouci).

See Enetröm E202.

Order-nr.: 44268